Civ VI Expansions: Brain Dump

[2012Jarrett]

With Civ VI out on the market and DLC already coming out, which expansions should they add down the line?

My ideas:

Mighty Earth- Introduces many features related to nature and the environment to the game. Upon completing the industrial era, a CO2 bar becomes visible. This rises due to the presence of factories, removal of forest/jungle tiles, and other environmental hazards. This can be slowed by removing factories and replacing them with solar/nuclear/hydro plants, replanting forests over farmland, building wind turbines over farmland, and the like. Once the CO2 bar fills up, the water level rises one tile and instantly wipes out anything on the coast, then again, and so on. Tundra tiles stop being tundra, and ice tiles melt one by one while the CO2 bar rises. Oil spills can now happen and pollute (think like fallout or pillaging) ocean tiles and resources. You could make proposals regarding offshore drilling or CO2 emissions in the World Congress (global ban on factories, production bonus towards spaceship parts to leave behind a dying planet). There would be a tile improvement for National Parks that can be built over natural wonders that generates tourism. Biofuel could also be researched late game to eliminate the need for oil resources for units. Add new civs that value nature or have UAs that relate to this new Climate Change feature (The Inuit could need the water to rise 2 tiles past their land before it is consumed, Canada could be a science-based civ that has an arctic research base UI for Tundra tiles, maybe Papau New Guinea's UA relates to their beliefs about nature, the like).

By the way: Hi! New here. My friend knew I love politics and travel and that I'm an engineer so he recommended Civ V for me and I can't put it down!

 

[Elucidus]

I don't think pollution is represented at all right now.

But the ideas have merit, they just have to be balanced and made to add challenge and fun to the game.

 

[psychoneirik]

I would love to see the congress come back in an expansion as well as the diplomatic victory, but reworked so it is not just "who can get more gold" like it was on civ 5. Also I think the religion system has several flaws and just feels plain and boring to me, I think they should try to improve it with an expansion.

 

[Kothre]

• More military units. This is a huge omission from the release version of Civ VI. There are just not enough. It's ridiculous how long there is between unit upgrades. You shouldn't have to wait two or three eras to upgrade, say, your horseman to a cavalry, then to a helicopter. Speaking of which...
• Modern combat needs to categorize unit types more realistically. Helicopters do not behave like helicopters; they behave like horses, which is really lazy design. Tanks should be invincible to small arms fire but highly vulnerable to helicopters, planes, and AT guns.
• Diplomacy overhauls. There needs to be a lot more to do with other Civs, and there need to be more diplomatic modifiers. Coalitions, rivalries (similar to EU IV's), and longer-lasting alliances that actually mean something. Casus belli should be more in-depth. At the very least, make it so diplomacy means anything. As it stands now, every AI hates everyone else and that's how it works 95% of the time. Nukes need to completely change the landscape of diplomacy like they did during the Cold War- threatening to use nukes if someone does X should be a selectable option that carries weight behind it.
• I'd really love to see an era or two past Information, and to start getting into some futuristic technology (though not as futuristic as Beyond Earth's).
  
• Events such as natural disasters. My personal favorite end-game one would be spontaneous alien invasion- that would be sweet especially if new eras were added past Information.
• Disease outbreaks
• Religion should have more impact, and the religious victory needs a lot more substance. Currently, it's nothing but missionary/apostle spamming. Boring.
• Also, can we finally split Islam into Sunni and Shia? There should also be a couple Islam-themed religious attributes so I can roleplay it better:
  • Jizya: gain X gold for every citizen in your empire that does not follow your religion
  • Jihad: permanent Holy War casus belli against every nation that does not follow your religion, and +X% combat efficiency against nations of other religions
• Vassalage. Why is this not in the game (or V)?
• Colonies. I've wanted this since Civ V. I want the ability to actually set up resource gathering "cities" that aren't actually cities; they just exist to secure resources. I'd also like the ability to basically exploit other civs that are way behind in technology other than just annexing them like we can now. The colonial war casus belli is cool, but ultimately meaningless when colonization isn't an actual game mechanic. It is such a huge part of human history, that it's rather scandalous it isn't a game feature somehow.

 

[Leyrann]

There's actually been several civs that had global warming mechanics. I'm not sure how much I would like seeing them though, as it's hard or even impossible to make them as subtle in a game as they actually are in real life; you can't just at certain points change a bunch of tiles into different tiles and call it global warming. It's just annoying gameplay and nothing else, and it's nowhere near realistic. And tiles don't have a gliding scale of what they are like; it's grassland, plains or desert, basically. I remember in civ 2 if you terraformed (yes, you could do that) land too much and didn't clean up your pollution (yes, you could do that too), at some point half of the tiles in the game would shift to a different kind. Of course it can be done a lot better than that, but I doubt it can be done well enough it would feel like global warming instead of stupid, annoying gameplay for no reason.

 

[Fabio1701]

A proper naval warfare map. Earth on the biggest scale, but only the amount of land of a standard map. A truelly realistic ration of land to sea is 70%.

 

[Leyrann]

A proper naval warfare map. Earth on the biggest scale, but only the amount of land of a standard map. A truelly realistic ration of land to sea is 70%.

I'm okay with this, on one condition. AI should know how to do naval warfare before maps are mad for it.

 

[UWHabs]

There's actually been several civs that had global warming mechanics. I'm not sure how much I would like seeing them though, as it's hard or even impossible to make them as subtle in a game as they actually are in real life; you can't just at certain points change a bunch of tiles into different tiles and call it global warming. It's just annoying gameplay and nothing else, and it's nowhere near realistic. And tiles don't have a gliding scale of what they are like; it's grassland, plains or desert, basically. I remember in civ 2 if you terraformed (yes, you could do that) land too much and didn't clean up your pollution (yes, you could do that too), at some point half of the tiles in the game would shift to a different kind. Of course it can be done a lot better than that, but I doubt it can be done well enough it would feel like global warming instead of stupid, annoying gameplay for no reason.

To me, the best way to handle global warming/pollution would be to build that into the housing, amenities, and appeal. Factories and power plants should provide -1 amenity and -1 housing to each city they affect, as well as -1 housing to each neighbourhood within their area of influence. You could provide later power plants (solar, hydro, nuclear) which would have less effects, and other buildings like recycling centres or mass transit to remove those penalties.

For global warming, you then can have some sort of global pollution scale. The more it rises, the more it removes appeal from all tiles. So if you truly don't care about the environment, every tile will essentially have horrible appeal. This would also make the cultural victory have to care more about the environment as well, as their seaside resorts won't work if the global pollution becomes too high and their tiles lose the breathtaking appeal.

 

[Fabio1701]

I'm okay with this, on one condition. AI should know how to do naval warfare before maps are mad for it.

could still be cool for multiplayer.... I think the lack of space is a factor for the AI's trouble. A fleet takes uplors of space. but the AI ingenerall needs work. The combo of ranged and melee at sea is not much different than on land strategically. It should be easier on sea because there is no terrain to worry about. the siege stupidities of the AI on land are just as egrarious as what I have seen on sea.

 

[Leyrann]

To me, the best way to handle global warming/pollution would be to build that into the housing, amenities, and appeal. Factories and power plants should provide -1 amenity and -1 housing to each city they affect, as well as -1 housing to each neighbourhood within their area of influence. You could provide later power plants (solar, hydro, nuclear) which would have less effects, and other buildings like recycling centres or mass transit to remove those penalties.

For global warming, you then can have some sort of global pollution scale. The more it rises, the more it removes appeal from all tiles. So if you truly don't care about the environment, every tile will essentially have horrible appeal. This would also make the cultural victory have to care more about the environment as well, as their seaside resorts won't work if the global pollution becomes too high and their tiles lose the breathtaking appeal.

I wouldn't like that one either. I mean, you have some 8 different levels of possible appeal, which is better than 3 possible terrain types, but it's still a lot. That said, maybe you could make factories and the like permanently reduce the appear of nearby tiles, having them slowly spread their global warming influence.

I guess it's just the global parameter that I feel can't be balanced well...

 

[TruthfulCake]

I think that environment-related features and randomized events should go hand-in-hand. For example, global warming should cause abnormal weather like flooding or snow storms to occur more frequently, and in an extreme case, maybe civs can lose their land tiles to the ocean due to the rising water levels, etc. In turn, this should also necessitate a World Congress of sorts, with resolutions that ban deforestation or limit the number of functional factories, etc. Civs that contribute to eco-friendly causes will also get bonuses to tourism, etc.

As it is, Teddy's agenda does not make much sense since it really doesn't concern him if I cut my trees down. But with a real impact to gameplay, I can get over Teddy getting pissed at me for my rampant destruction of nature.

Many of the base game's features actually look like they are paving way for this feature, such as tile appeal and national parks. I hope they introduce this as a check and balance for the importance of production right now.

Other than that, I would hope for a complete revamp of the tech tree, which currently looks like tech three-parallel-lines. Disable extreme beelining, and have the techs make more sense (they don't have to be too intertwined, but at least sensible enough to not blatantly break immersion). There is enough variety in build orders even when the techs are as interconnected as seen in the Vox Populi mod for Civ 5.

Vassalage is pretty cool, too, although the current AI might not be able to make decisions with this element introduced.

 

[Mobfire]

I'd love to see a colonization & rebellion system be introduced to the game, to balance the maintaining of large empires.

• Cities that you conquer initially would continue to produce culture for whoever had them before. Ex: Paris would continue to make French culture even if Germany had it. The longer you have a city the more it's culture becomes your own, especially if the population born under your reign exceeds that of the population born under its previous owner. This would make warmongering to take advantage of someone else's culture less OP.
• Cities that you found far away enough from your homeland would begin generating their own culture, distinct from your own.
• If a bunch of cities generate a distinct culture from yours, whether it be someone else's or an entirely new one, they may start a rebellion, spawning rebel troops to try secede from your empire. If they succeed and overcome you they may declare their independence as city states, or potentially even as new civilizations.
• You can found colonies as a way of claiming land and resources on continents far away from you in the later game. Having a colony would increase your happiness and growth rate, but some of your citizens might migrate there, you don't have complete control over their actions, and you have to provide them with things such as funding and defense. If you fail to provide a colony with what it needs it, or if enough time has passed and the colony has become very strong, it might declare it's independence from you. You could chose to contest the declaration in order to try to keep them as a puppet, which, if it fails, would result in a new civilization that hates you, or, you could accept it's declaration and the result would be a new civilization that is strongly allied with you.
• Having a large empire doesn't harm your core cities but it increases the chances that a rebellion occurs in your other cities, especially if you don't take much care of them and don't develop them much. So the more land you control the more of an army you need to keep your territories under control, instead of you not even needing to garrison cities that aren't on any war fronts.

 

[Siptah]

I'd love to see a colonization & rebellion system be introduced to the game, to balance the maintaining of large empires.

• Cities that you conquer initially would continue to produce culture for whoever had them before. Ex: Paris would continue to make French culture even if Germany had it. The longer you have a city the more it's culture becomes your own, especially if the population born under your reign exceeds that of the population born under its previous owner. This would make warmongering to take advantage of someone else's culture less OP.
• Cities that you found far away enough from your homeland would begin generating their own culture, distinct from your own.
• If a bunch of cities generate a distinct culture from yours, whether it be someone else's or an entirely new one, they may start a rebellion, spawning rebel troops to try secede from your empire. If they succeed and overcome you they may declare their independence as city states, or potentially even as new civilizations.
• You can found colonies as a way of claiming land and resources on continents far away from you in the later game. Having a colony would increase your happiness and growth rate, but some of your citizens might migrate there, you don't have complete control over their actions, and you have to provide them with things such as funding and defense. If you fail to provide a colony with what it needs it, or if enough time has passed and the colony has become very strong, it might declare it's independence from you. You could chose to contest the declaration in order to try to keep them as a puppet, which, if it fails, would result in a new civilization that hates you, or, you could accept it's declaration and the result would be a new civilization that is strongly allied with you.
• Having a large empire doesn't harm your core cities but it increases the chances that a rebellion occurs in your other cities, especially if you don't take much care of them and don't develop them much. So the more land you control the more of an army you need to keep your territories under control, instead of you not even needing to garrison cities that aren't on any war fronts.

I like those ideas in general. But in the way you are describing them, a (ancient mediterranean) scenario might fight better than the core game.

 

[Victoria]

I liked the way you could end up converting the oppositions cities to yours without war in previous releases.
Some culture / religious pressures + propoganda and proximity variables perhaps?

 

[Siptah]

I liked the way you could end up converting the oppositions cities to yours without war in previous releases.
Some culture / religious pressures + propoganda and proximity variables perhaps?

I really liked the cultural influence. But I always thought that converting cities is a bit much. In Civ VI I'd say that even converting tiles is a bit too much.
I'd like a nearby cultural lighthouse city to influence nearby (less cultural) cities though - maybe increased war weariness, increased religious pressure, increased unhappiness in some way. Also more tourism generation comes to my mind.
If tiles or cities are allowed to change, I think the original owner should have a possibility to intervene with money or military and stop it. But that could be done with increased unhappiness and barbarian spawning due to loss of amenities.

 

[Leyrann]

I really liked the cultural influence. But I always thought that converting cities is a bit much. In Civ VI I'd say that even converting tiles is a bit too much.
I'd like a nearby cultural lighthouse city to influence nearby (less cultural) cities though - maybe increased war weariness, increased religious pressure, increased unhappiness in some way. Also more tourism generation comes to my mind.
If tiles or cities are allowed to change, I think the original owner should have a possibility to intervene with money or military and stop it. But that could be done with increased unhappiness and barbarian spawning due to loss of amenities.

Or what about reducing the strength of units that are in the area of the less cultural city; if they actually want to join the country that's invading the area, they won't fight nearly as hard. Heck, you could even make a casus belli for it: War of Cultural Liberation: 50% less warmonger penalty applies for cities you conquer in which your culture is dominant.

 

[Liufeng]

I would like a few things, at least about victories.

First, make the Religious Victory able to every civ in the game, even if they did not found a religion (I'm especially thinking about Kongo). How to achieve that ? Well, we could that if a civilization did not found a religion, they could still win the same way as others, AND capturing the Holy city of the religion your spreading (and do it before converting half of the world, otherwise it would be the owner of the Holy city that would win, and helping the enemy winning is kind of a dumb play ). That way, every civilization could have access to all victories, even without "founding" a religion (and that makes your holy city even more precious to protect).
Also, I would really really really like the return of the World Congress, along with a Diplomatic Victory. About the World Congress, I'd prefer it started on the Industrial Era rather than the Renaissance Era, simply because historically, world congresses started rather late (the first "world" congress being the Congress of Vienna). Like in Civ V, the number of votes could increase over time : in Industrial Era, City-states cannot vote, in Modern Era, +5 votes from the City-states to their suzerain. In the Atomic Era, the number of City-states would equal the number of envoys the suzerain has sent, and in the Information Era, the number of envoys it has received in general. The number of votes of the Major Civilizations would be equal to the number of envoys it has gained during the game.
About the Diplomatic Victory, let's be honest, in Civ V it was an Economic Victory. With the Envoy system in Civ VI, damn, it would a lot more look like a real diplomatic Victory. The way I see it, it would work this way
The world leader votes start when half of the present Civilizations attain the Atomic Era, or one attains the Information Era. To be the World Leader, a Civilization needs to have half of the Major Civilizations vote for it, and half of the overall votes. Civilizations cannot vote for themselves. The number of votes of a Civilizations is the equal to the number of envoys it has gained throughout the game. City-states vote for for their suzerain. If a City-state does not have a suzerain, it will vote for the Civilization that has sent the most envoys to it (in case of a tie, the Civilization is chosen randomly between the two). The number of votes of a City-state is equal to the number of envoys that have been sent to it by all Civilizations. (needless to say that with such conditions, you'll never get Frederick Barbarossa to vote for you because of his agenda).
Finally, a last kind of Victory could be the Economic one. For it, I simply thought of the world we live nowadays : a few has everything, most have nothing. But it wasn't enough : we live in a world of trade. Money comes from much trade. Then, I realized it : how to achieve the Economic Victory. The way I see it is, to me, the best way to represent how the Financial institutions control everything nowadays.
To win an Economic Victory, a Civilization needs to posses one copy of every Luxury (Unique Luxury resources from City-states excluded) and Strategic resource of the map (which means the victory is locked until Nuclear Fission tech), and have a trade route with every Major Civilization present in the game, and have an income equal or higher than the total income per turn of the half poorest Major Civilizations of the game.

I liked the way you could end up converting the oppositions cities to yours without war in previous releases.
Some culture / religious pressures + propoganda and proximity variables perhaps?

Maybe an "rare" apostle promotion could allow them to "conquer" a city in which 100% of the population is converted to the said religion.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

I would like a few things, at least about victories.

First, make the Religious Victory able to every civ in the game, even if they did not found a religion (I'm especially thinking about Kongo). How to achieve that ? Well, we could that if a civilization did not found a religion, they could still win the same way as others, AND capturing the Holy city of the religion your spreading (and do it before converting half of the world, otherwise it would be the owner of the Holy city that would win, and helping the enemy winning is kind of a dumb play ). That way, every civilization could have access to all victories, even without "founding" a religion (and that makes your holy city even more precious to protect).

I like the idea to make religious victory available to everyone but I would take another approach to it.

Leave religion unchanged for now but add another wave to the game. Come the late game, new Great Prophets become available equal to the number of civs who habe not founded a religion.

The new prophets don't generate religionsbut ideologies which act exactly like religions but have another set of benefits which would be stronger than religious beliefs.

Therefore you would (deliberately?) miss out on the early to mid game benefits of a religion but get something more powerful in the lategame.

 

[skywalker]

I want them to fix the horrible mistake they made in Civ 5 with trade routes.

Trade routes do not make sense. This is a problem and it is the problem underlying all of the issues with balancing them in 5, BE, and 6.

Trade routes just magically produce stuff out of nothing, and they do so fully at the direction of the human player. There's no explanation for why or how the trade route produces the stuff. This is a problem because that's not how trade works.

If I put a city in the tundra somewhere, give it a Commercial Hub and Harbor, it now has two trade routes that can generate a lot of food and shields per turn. Why? Why do I have a reason to go make this random city in the middle of nowhere, just so it can get magical production out of a trade route?

Trade routes in 4 were boring but at least vaguely corresponded to the idea represented - you would get automatic trade routes forming between the biggest and best cities, with the value of the trade route depending on the pairing. You can see then how there is at least some plausible correspondence to how trade actually produces value.

So if we want trade routes that are not boring but that aren't total nonsense, how do we do it? Microfound the trade model - create a reason for trade to happen.

Trade happens because two agents each have something the other wants. So how can we make that happen in civ, so that trade ought to happen naturally? Luxuries.

Rather than have luxuries just automatically spread throughout your empire for free, have them spread via automatically-generated trade routes. This generates gold income in the city that creates the luxury and costs gold in the city that consumes it.

Add a surcharge to represent the cost of transportation, and then make things like Harbors and Commercial Hubs reduce the surcharge (or let you capture a portion of it for your treasury), along with techs like Refrigeration or Steam Engine.

Finally, you can provide culture / science / faith bonuses to trade routes, especially international trade routes between countries with different techs or civics, to model the diffusion of knowledge.

This is a big change but I think it's one that could fit into an expansion - or be worth an expansion.

 

[greyTiger]

I would like a few things, at least about victories.
About the Diplomatic Victory, let's be honest, in Civ V it was an Economic Victory. With the Envoy system in Civ VI, damn, it would a lot more look like a real diplomatic Victory. The way I see it, it would work this way
The world leader votes start when half of the present Civilizations attain the Atomic Era, or one attains the Information Era. To be the World Leader, a Civilization needs to have half of the Major Civilizations vote for it, and half of the overall votes. Civilizations cannot vote for themselves. The number of votes of a Civilizations is the equal to the number of envoys it has gained throughout the game. City-states vote for for their suzerain. If a City-state does not have a suzerain, it will vote for the Civilization that has sent the most envoys to it (in case of a tie, the Civilization is chosen randomly between the two). The number of votes of a City-state is equal to the number of envoys that have been sent to it by all Civilizations. (needless to say that with such conditions, you'll never get Frederick Barbarossa to vote for you because of his agenda).

Finally, a last kind of Victory could be the Economic one. For it, I simply thought of the world we live nowadays : a few has everything, most have nothing. But it wasn't enough : we live in a world of trade. Money comes from much trade. Then, I realized it : how to achieve the Economic Victory. The way I see it is, to me, the best way to represent how the Financial institutions control everything nowadays.
To win an Economic Victory, a Civilization needs to posses one copy of every Luxury (Unique Luxury resources from City-states excluded) and Strategic resource of the map (which means the victory is locked until Nuclear Fission tech), and have a trade route with every Major Civilization present in the game, and have an income equal or higher than the total income per turn of the half poorest Major Civilizations of the game.

If you are interested in additional victories then you can check out my mod 'CiVI Reformation Victories'. It's currently at version 1.4 and includes 4 new victory types. The Economic victory is quite close to what you describe too, so perhaps you would like it